February 21st, 2007The Forums Return!We never were able to retrieve the data from Server Pronto's server (the old dpball.com). They wanted us to shell out $250. No, thanks. I must say I'm not at all pleased with ServerPronto's level of customer service and wouldn't recommend them to anybody. We just went with the last backup I had and lost a month or two worth of forum posts. I will be doing backups much more frequently on the new forums to minimize the loss if anything like this happens again in the future.December 25th, 2006Merry Christmas! (And a Status Update)I wish I had better news for this Christmas, but it doesn't look like we'll be getting the server back that was hosting the forums. Delirious tried his hardest to get in touch with ServerPronto and figure out what went wrong, but the only response he ever got was to read and respond to the email sent to his electropsycho.com email account. Guess what? That account was hosted on the server they shut down. I have personally attempted to contact and reason with ServerPronto through their abuse department, since that's what got the server shut down, but I haven't heard a peep from them.

In the meantime, we've redirected dpball.com to another server to at least get some of the core functionality back up, such as the server list. If you're still having trouble, your DNS may not be updated yet. It should resolve in time. For the forums, we've set up a temporary shelter on the forums of a personal friend of mine. You can visit the Paintball2 subforum here. Perhaps you're feeling festive and wish to discuss this holiday or simply want to wish everybody a Merry Christmas? Visit this thread.

The official Digital Paint forums will probably not be back up for another week or so. I would like to get all of the current data, but we will probably end up losing about a month's worth of posts unless somebody can work some magic.

If you can work that magic, here are some of the details:- Hosting company: ServerPronto.com (part of InfoLink.com)- Their contact email: I was using abuse@serverpronto.com, but that got no response.- IP of the server that was shut down: 65.111.169.183- Domain name: electropsycho.com and dpball.com (dpball.com has since been directed to a new ip)- Name of the person leasing the server: Steven Andresen (this is Delirious, not me)- His registered contact email: steve@electropsycho.com (this email account is obviously inaccessible)

I think what happened is that sendmail (or whatever Redhat 9 uses) basically exploded. Delirious had it disabled because of previous issues where sendmail vulnerabilities lead to black listing. During this period of time, sendmail had thousands of emails backlogged. Somehow it got activated and BOOM! Every forum activation email, PM notification, new reply notification, and whatever else the forum software sends out emails for got sent simultaneously. Stuff dating all the way back to 2003, I think. We're not sure if that by itself caused ServerPronto to shut the server down, or if whatever activated sendmail was also using it for malicious purposes. We may never know.December 18th, 2006Forums are DownWe're not sure exactly what happened, but serverpronto has shut down dpball.com for an "AUP violation". Here's the message:

Your server was suspended for AUP violation, please check with our abuse department since they have send you a detail email on that subject.Gooday- violation will result in an "Administrative Fee" of $500 and immediate termination of your account.Users who violate this policy agree that in addition to these "Administrative" penalties, they will pay "Research Fees" not to exceed $175 per hour that ServerPronto/Infolink personnel must spend to investigate the matter. PLEASE, DO NOT SPAM from your account.

Our guess is that sendmail got hijacked. The policy they have seems terrible at best. They should be working to support their customers, not charging them outrageous fees and suspending their accounts when something goes wrong. Chances are, we will not be able to get it back online unless somebody has some good contacts at serverpronto and can help us bypass all the male bovine excrement. We certainly aren't shelling out $500 + $175/hr for them to "administrate" and "research". I can already tell you what the problem is. It's the ancient software they have running on their servers (Red Hat Linux 9). It's probably the security equivalent of swiss cheese. The forums will simply have to be moved to a new server with whatever the last backup I have of the database is. Unfortunately, it's not very recent, and it's also not where I am. I won't be able to get it online until after Christmas.Xfire Supports Digital Paint: Paintball 2Some of your Xfire users may have noticed a new game added to the list: this one! We're contemplating having a little contest to see who can get the most Paintball2 time on Xfire. It will have to wait until after the holidays, though.November 21st, 2006Vote for Paintball 2 at ModDBMod DB is holding a vote for the best mod of 2006. If you enjoy this game, vote for it!

October 18th, 2006Build 17 Status UpdateIt's been a while, I know. I've been making slow but sure progress on build 17. While there's still a lot left to be done, I do have something you can play with now. The web portion of the login system isn't feature complete yet, but it is functional. You can give it a try here. Keep in mind that this is only the test system and may have its contents wiped or run into other problems since I'm still working on it. Give it a try and post some feedback in the global login implementation thread.

As always, if you want more information on the status of the development, visit my .plan thread. Most everything is going to the global login thread, though, as that's where most of my development time is being spent.